With increasing development of industries, robot manipulators having articulated arm have been applied to replace manpower for improving production efficiency and reducing cost. The tool or a tool module capable of carrying the tool thereon is connected with the end-shaft of the articulated arm to achieve various applications, for example tightening screw.
At present, the robot manipulator can be roughly divided into three types. In the first-type robot manipulator, the tool is directly connected with the end-shaft of the articulated arm of the robot manipulator. In the second-type robot manipulator, the tool module is connected with the end-shaft of the articulated arm, the work position of the tool carried by the tool module is fixed, and a center line of the tool and the axis of the end-shaft are parallel and apart from each other with a distance. In the third-type robot manipulator, the tool module is connected with the end-shaft of the articulated arm of the robot manipulator, and an inclination angle of the tool carried by the tool module can be adjusted so as to change the work position of the tool according to the practical requirements by hand.
However, the three types of robot manipulators have respective drawbacks. For the first-type robot manipulator, the tool is directly connected with the end-shaft of the articulated arm, and the work position of the tool cannot be changed. Under this circumstance, the form and the length of the tool are limited by the accommodation space below the end-shaft of the articulated arm. Consequently, the applicability and the working range of the tool are limited. For the second-type robot manipulator, the work position of the tool cannot be changed similarly so that the working range of the tool is limited. For the third-type robot manipulator, the drawbacks of the above-mentioned first-type robot manipulator and second-type robot manipulator are overcome. Nevertheless, the inclination angle of the tool carried by the tool module should be adjusted by hand, which causes the complexity of use and reduces the production efficiency.
Various robot manipulators are developed for solving the problems of the above-mentioned three types of robot manipulators, but the robot manipulators have the drawbacks of limiting and reducing the working range, for example the working range of the tool is smaller than the working range of the end-shaft of the articulated arm of the robot manipulator.
Therefore, there is a need of providing a tool driving module and a robot manipulator employing the same to obviate the drawbacks encountered from the prior arts.